Title

Author

Year of Publication

Paper Type

Master's Thesis

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Degree Name

Master of Arts in General Psychology (MAGP)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Brian Fisak, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Randall Russac, Ph.D.

Abstract

Although worry is a common source of distress in children and adolescents, relatively few studies have focused on understanding worry in both of these age groups (Cartwright-Hatton, 2006). This area of research is of particular relevance, as understanding worry in youth may have implications for the assessment and treatment of adolescent worry and other anxiety-related difficulties. Consequently, the focuses of this study were to examine the validity and relevance of metacognitive measures of worry in an adolescent sample, to determine the degree to which metacognitive worry is associated with worry in adolescents, and to examine the potential association between adolescent metacognitive worry and intolerance of uncertainty, another cognitive variable hypothesized to be associated with worry, in an adolescent sample. A total of 175 adolescents between the ages of 11-17 were recruited from local middle and high schools to complete a series of self-report measures, which included the following: the Metacognitive Questionnaire for Children, the Meta-Worry Questionnaire, the Intolerance of Uncertainty Scale for Children, the Penn State Worry Questionnaire for Children, and the Spence Children‘s Anxiety Scale. The findings of this study suggest that metacognition may play a role in the development and maintenance of excessive worry and related generalized anxiety disorder symptoms in adolescents. Further, current findings provide support for the combined influence of metacognitive beliefs and intolerance of uncertainty in the development and maintenance of worry.